Enjoy the Experience Homemade Records 19581992. This item is unavailable.Enjoy the Experience Homemade Records 19581992

Enjoy the Experience is the largest collection of American private-press vinyl ever amassed and presented, featuring more than 1,000 cover reproductions from 1958–1992. The musicians here range from awkward teen pop combos to pizza-parlor organists; religious cult leaders to Sinatra imitators. But this is not a novelty show: also profiled and discussed are some of the most highly regarded rock, soul, jazz, funk and singer/songwriter albums from the latter half of the twentieth century. Enjoy the Experience begins when the custom-pressed American record plant came into existence and ends, largely, with the birth of the CD. As such, it is a snapshot of America in the second half of the twentieth century and collates a bevy of tales and albums released by the brave souls who took the plunge and committed their musical vision to wax. Enjoy the Experience details a forceful American cultural experience that stands in juxtaposition to the mainstream even as its creators attempted to infiltrate it. With a wealth of full-color reproductions, an introduction by editor Johan Kugelberg, an overview by legendary record dealer Paul Major, along with commentaries, reviews and 50 biographies by noted enthusiasts and collectors, Enjoy the Experience also includes a download card for dozens of the greatest songs culled from the book.

A private-press LP at the thrift store is a curio, a personal find, but the same LP featured in a coffee-table book is a collector’s item. Whatever you might have made of the original, it wasn’t—by definition—salable. After being included in this stylish art book though, that scarcity becomes value. And it’s unmistakable that many of the album covers in Enjoy the Experience have the novelty, mystery, and visual apeal that translate into consumer desirability. Indeed, that desirability underliesmuch of the book’s raison d’être. Like galleries or fine-art collectors, the editors of Enjoy the Experience, have, in cataloguing their passion, marketed it as well. […] The album art in this volume stretches the genre because we haven’t seen it before. But once we have, the real surprise may be how comfortably it fits inside. —Damon Krukowski